Sunday, 25 January 2015

Asteroid 2004 BL86, slated to swoosh by Earth on Jan. 26, is the largest known body to pass near our home planet until 2027. But there’s no need to panic as the astronomers estimate that the 500 meters-wide space rock will pass by Earth at a safe distance of about three LD (lunar distances) - that’s 1.2 million km from us. “We can indeed safely say that there is no chance - in the next 100 years - that this object will hit [Earth],” Detlef Koschny, head of the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Segment in the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme office at ESA, told astrowatch.net. The upcoming fly-by will also be a great opportunity for scientists and amateur astronomers to observe the rocky visitor from outer space allowing them to gather valuable scientific data and to obtain detailed images.

Friday, 23 January 2015

In factthis is aphenomenonwell known tometeorologists, optical phenomenon, called"parhelion" or"false sun", when twobright spotsseenon both sides ofthe sunat the same heightabove the horizon. The observerthenhas theimpressionto seetwoorthree suns.

Sunday, 11 January 2015

The gas giant Jupiter safeguards many secrets crucial to our understanding of the evolution of our solar system. It could also provide insights on how giant planets form and the role these titans played in putting together the rest of the solar neighborhood. NASA’s Juno spacecraft is on its way to reveal those mysteries as the probe is on course for its planned arrival at Jupiter on July 4, 2016. “On that date, Juno will make its first dive over the planet's poles, firing its rocket engine to slow down just enough for the giant planet's gravity to capture the spacecraft into orbit,” Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, Juno’s principal investigator told astrowatch.net. “All of Juno's instruments are healthy and working well. The Juno team anticipates some truly wonderful results when their experiments reach Jupiter.”

Friday, 2 January 2015

Retrospectivesciencein 2014. West Africa’s Ebola epidemic captured the attention of both the
scientific world and the world at large in 2014, placing it first among
the Top 25 stories of the year. Other big news included the rise and
fall of a claimed detection of gravitational waves, new findings about
the history of early humans from analyses of DNA and the spectacular
landing of the Rosetta spacecraft’s robotic explorer Philae on comet
67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.